MI News: Land Transport Authority Smart City Hackathon Winners!

Massive Infinity

Our team members – Tracy, Thomas and Norman – were part of the team 501 that won top prize at the LTA Hackathon with the winning mobile app idea #ComeRideWithMe.

Here is the full story:

Singapore has a reliable and efficient public transport infrastructure. People with special needs generally do not have problems on public transport, except for the “Last Mile” of their commute. #ComeRideWithMe is an upcoming mobile app which hopes to bridge that gap.

The “Last Mile”, is the portion of the journey from public transport infrastructure to their destination, which can be a maze of overhead bridges, multiple traffic lights, or simply a lack of accessibility options.

A group of technology professionals have created an app that will make it easier for people with special needs to find a helping hand when they commute.

#ComeRideWithMe, won the “Most Promising Transport App” award at the first edition of Land Transport Authority’s Transport and Youth Hackathon last April.

The app allows users with special needs to set start and end locations of their commute. Through geolocation & geofencing, the app matches the users with volunteers within the vicinity. This activity is termed as “Missions” in the app.

“By inviting the other party to #ComeRideWithMe, technology is used to leverage on human connection to make rides smoother and safer”, said Thomas Dohm, 27, one of the creators of the app, after the awards ceremony.

The app takes advantage of DataMall, which LTA uses to share live transport data to match volunteers to people with special needs. The app contains information on where MRT station exits and bus stops are located, and tracking locations are enabled by Global Positioning System (GPS) on smartphones.

The team came up with the idea after realising that they could both make the commuting journey smoother for people with special needs and rekindle the Kampong Spirit in public transportation at the same time.

“Most of the target users we talked to highlighted that the real challenge for them were the Last Mile portions that are not covered by public transport directly: making their way to the MRT or bus stop, changing between trains, making their way home”, said Thomas Dohm.

The team is further developing the app to bring it to market and are in talks with National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre to establish the volunteer base needed for the app. The NVPC has set up SG Cares in 2009, which has 40,000 volunteers on record.

#ComeRideWithMe has a function which logs down the time spent for each “mission”, collecting the data for each volunteer to gamify the experience & account for community service hours. This enables anyone to engage in volunteerism during their commute and whenever they are free to help. This function also allows for integration with community programmes across organizations.

The upcoming plans it to move into community testing by working with associations for the handicapped & tapping on the Community Involvement Programme of the Ministry of Education. The team is also exploring opportunities to work with companies on Corporate Social Responsibility to bring up the volunteer base.

#ComeRideWithMe is now seeking volunteer organizations and corporate bodies who are exploring volunteerism and corporate social responsibility opportunities.

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